This issue of photoGRAPHICS features photographs by David Husom made with a plastic lens Gakkenflex camera. Taken over a one year period, the 50 plus color photographs record the photographers day to day life and travels in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Western Ontario and Manitoba.

The 35mm twin lens reflex camera was built from a kit available in the Japanese magazine Otona no Kagaku. The easy to assemble camera can be built within about an hour. Basic information on the Gakkenflex camera is included in this issue.

The issue also includes a look at the history of plastic lens photography including the Holga and Diana cameras and ponders the popularity of these cameras. In addition is an essay on a look back at the MOMA exhibit "Mirrors and Windows" organized by John Szarkowski in 1978.

The magazine is available in both print and digital format for $20.00 or digital only for $2.00: Order the magazine from: davidhusom.magcloud.com

I am once again in the annual winter show at the Anderson Center in Red Wing. This year I decided to do something a bit different. It is a 15 inch X 60 inch panorama of Stockholm Wisconsin taken from across Lake Pepin. It was shot from our campsite on the Minnesota side of the river on a beautiful fall night this past October.

It is a part of my ingoing series of images of Wisconsin HIghway 35. It is the first, but not the last pano I will add to this body of work.

A detail of the image showing the "downtown" area of Stockholm is on the right. Select the image to see a larger detail of the work.

In the Heart of the Whirlwind: Tornadoes in Art, Myth, Poetry, and Song

Friday, January 21, 2011, 10:13 PM

June 14th 1981 a tornado did what everyone always says tornados do not do. It hit the center of the city in Minneapolis and the first ring suburbs of St. Paul. It killed one person and damaged parkland in Minneapolis and a number of stores in Roseville, just north of St. Paul. It is known as the Lake Harriet Tornado in Minneapolis and the Har Mar Tornado in St. Paul.

The next morning I grabbed my 4X5 camera and went to see the damage in the Uptown area of Minneapolis. I primarily shot around Lakewood Cemetery top left and Lyndale Farmstead Park — between 38th and 40th on Kings Highway (Dupont Ave) lower rIght.

I processed the film and made contact sheets but never did anything with the shots. I had long forgotten about the tornado photographs when Robert Hedin from the Anderson Center in Red Wing asked me if I had any photographs for a show he was curating on tornadoes. I said I really did not think I had anything.

A few months later I realized that I had photographed not just one, but the aftermath of two tornadoes. I had shot the Harriet one in 1981 and one in Hutchinson Minnesota in 1983. I dug out the contacts and he and I picked out some images for the show including the two shown here (Click on the images to see a larger photo).

It is a great show. A special treat is Scott Murphy, a painter from Duluth Minnesota, is also in the show. We had been in a show together once before, and I have printed for him for quite a few years now, but we had never met in person. He has a great painting of a tornado in the show.

Get by to see the show if you are in the Red Wing area. It is at the Anderson Center until March 19th.

I was excited to learn a few months back that 12 of my photographs had entered the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) permanent collection. The images from both the fairground series, and more recent work on the Mississippi river towns of Wisconsin and Minnesota, were originally part of the Bruce and Nancy Berman collection and were a gift to the museum.

I was in the Bay area last week and paid a visit to the new home for some of my favorite photographs, and was humbled to see that they will be in good company. There are currently two exhibits at the museum. Both contain some truly great photographs by some of my favorite photographers.

The first exhibit 75 Years Looking Forward features an overview of the SFMOMA collection, as well as a look at some of the exhibits and directions the museum has gone in the past 75 years. It was good to see a modern museum willing to look back, and particularly interesting to have it acknowledge its history as a design museum as well. Outside of MOMA in NY, most contemporary art museums ignore the rich history of design they displayed once upon a time (I mean you WAC). The display of portable Olivetti typewriters was particularly touching given the area's history of killing off the once ubiquitous writing instrument. A room full of anonymous photographs and the history of wooden chairs was also an interesting stop along the way. But what was particularly good news was to see photography given its full credit by being intermixed with the paintings and sculptures. At last a contemporary museum that understands photography's place in the art world! Something that one can not find very often here in the midwest.

But wait, that is not all! The history of California photography was also featured in the exhibit The View From Here. It has long been obvious that CA has played a major role in the 20th century development of the medium. But I have admit that I was still surprised at how often I came across images that I showed in the classroom, when I taught photography history as part of darkroom photo courses. Sure there was Adams, Weston, Cunningham and Lange and the usual suspects. But the 13 print panorama by Eadweard Muybridge of SF in 1878 held up every bit as well as anything done in the 130+ years since. The final room featured work from the past decade, and I have to admit the one digital camera image in the show did lack something besides film grain. I think digital is still in its early stages and it might be a while before it can excite us as much as an albumen print from a glass negative by a master like Muybridge.

Of course I post here a digital camera shot of a photographer on the upper floors looking down on the lobby. It truly is a wonderful museum. I can not wait to go back.

In 1984 we spent about a year living in the town of Shimoda Japan. Located about 3 hours from Tokyo, the town is a well known hot spring spa and beach resort area, but also a rice farming and fishing village. At the time it also had a very active shipyards. I spent almost every day photographing the town and the countryside around Shimoda. Being away from major cities and professional photo labs I decided to primarily work in black and white, although I had been working exclusively in color for about seven years at that point. But like my earlier color work I used a 4X5 Sinar camera for all of my photography. I processed the film and made contact prints while in Japan and larger fiber based prints back at our studio, then located in St. Paul.

I had a show of the images in 1985 at Film in the Cities in St. Paul Minnesota with Stephen Shore (his of course were his American images and were color photographs) and a show in Japan later that same year with my wife Ann-Marie Rose, hers being hand colored black and white and shot with an 8X10 camera.

I had not forgotten about the work, and in fact my office in our studio hangs work from that series. But given that it has been 25 years I decided to do a short run small book of 25 of my favorite photos from that project. Click on the image above right to see the cover. The book is available on Lulu at: